Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

Silicon Valley 203

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. Heres my take.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Department Mission Statements – What am I Supposed to Do Today It wasn’t that we somehow had inherited dumb employees. But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. Titles are not the same as what your job is. This is a big idea. Two paragraphs, Five bullets.

Silicon Valley 269

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system, but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of advanced features like branching. At IMVU , our engineering team accumulated thousands upon thousands of tests, and we had a build cluster (using BuildBot ) that ran them. Youd better.

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, June 17, 2010 No departments Big companies have departments. I was an engineer on the engineering team. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. Startups are companies. Startups aspire to become big companies.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot (The following guest post is a new experiment for this blog. With 21 employees today, kaChing is devoted to recruiting professional managers and finding product/market fit , first for money managers, then for consumers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. January 6, 2010 12:49 AM Anonymoussaid. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Expo SF (May.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Altgate

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The presentation was on outsourcing generally, not just software engineering and the audience was very early stage companies (some yet to be founded). But did you know that founder Markus Frind has just 3 employees for his $10MM+ revenue business? Engineering/QA. He basically outsources everything. Customer Support.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I used to give copies of Four Steps out to my employees, in the hopes that it would instantly indoctrinate them into the methodology of Customer Development. I used to give copies of Four Steps out to my employees, in the hopes that it would instantly indoctrinate them into the methodology of Customer Development. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Although Im not a developer, I am captivated by the lean and agile start-up model that you write about. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

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Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. whos on the engineering team? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Usually we think of pitches in the context of raising money, but that is only one of many pitch situations. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This is an incredible skill, one that most engineers overlook. This is why companies often get out-competed by former employees (Palm vs Handspring to name just one), even though the upstart lacks all of the familiar resources, tools, processes, and support they used to have. Go on an agile diet quickly. Great post!

Customer 167

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crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 28, 2016

Startups are intended to be agile businesses that consistently face engineering and marketing challenges with creative thinking and a willingness to evolve. From 2010 to 2014, the company launched their service nationwide and received over $50 million in funding. But what if the company you are building begins to change?

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Naming Startup Marketing Technical Review 48

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned quite a few of these, including these most important ones: having engineers post on the forums in their own name when they make a change routinely split-testing new changes routinely conducting in-person usability tests and interviews Net Promoter Score Each of these techniques is fundamentally bottoms-up.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. After I was done teaching each the day, I continued to write the operations manuals and work with the test engineers. (I Are You Single? Sign me up.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

The same has been true of an unfortunate number of startups, they manage to generate a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and sometimes make some of their investors, employees, or founders rich. Nothing is more demoralizing to an engineering team. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Expo SF (May.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

www.ere.net

JULY 15, 2012

by Dr. John Sullivan May 10, 2010, 12:16 am ET. The goal is to better understand precisely how they look for jobs, so that you can engineer your approach to advertising opportunities to make your jobs visible to them. May 10, 2010 at 6:26 am. May 10, 2010 at 9:39 am. Browse Articles by Tag. advertising. assessments.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

That engine of creativity has led to a catalog of something like 2 million virtual goods authored by a hundred thousand developers. Its an amazing thing when you can hire an employee who knows more about your code base than you do, and this turned out to be a big source of advantage. A true follower of Wikinomics concepts.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 31, 2016

We decided to start something we felt would have the greatest positive impact on fellow business owners, an Agile Methodology consulting company. We quit our jobs, pooled our money, and set out to help companies implement Agile – a highly efficient, organized, and empowering way to run your business. 11 – Seeing a Need.

Entrepreneur 48

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BeyondVC

FEBRUARY 12, 2014

With a focus on seed investing in the mobile, agile, and smart enterprise and business models that harness the power of network effects, our entrepreneurs have successfully been able to raise over $200 million of financing following our initial seed investment. focus on the mobile, agile, and smart enterprise".

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Combining agile development with customer developm.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Signs of Success One of the things you do right in a startup, is you move from one cheap and cramped building to another as you grow, with desks, cubicles and engineers piled cheek to jowl. Engineers were packed in cubicles or desks right on top of each other? Now every engineer can have their own office.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 23, 2009

And warm wishes for a successful 2010, filled with lots of MVP's. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Happy holidays to you all! Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Everyone from the receptionist to engineers is selling. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. Ive also used the voluntary salary reduction tool - its particularly useful as a way to get passionate employees who dont have a lot of personal expenses to buy into the mission of the company at a deep level.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We decided to work with our engineering department to create the Potreo benchmarks because we really wanted to see how our boards performed with the four applications customers told us that they used; Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and PageMaker. These were applications we had never seen or ran before when the boards were designed.

Silicon Valley 127

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. On the one hand, it gives you insight into what kind of employee the candidate might be. The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. To probe for agility, you have to ask the candidate questions involving something that they know little about.

San Francisco 146

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Employees should be masters of their own time Every startup should have a culture of learning. The rule is simple: every employee is 100% responsible for how they spend their time. The suggestion is that you implement one single company-wide rule. I asked why.

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Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 21, 2010 What is a startup? Yet, the real stories of successful startups are full of activities that can rightly be called institution-building: hiring creative employees, coordinating their activities, and creating a company culture that delivers results. How can that be part of a startup?

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San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, February 7, 2010 Tell your Startup Visa story Ive been promising big Startup Visa -related news on Twitter for a few weeks. Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. Soon, I promise. Soon, I promise. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

For example, I often cite a real example of a problem that has as its root cause a new employee who was not properly trained. I pick that example on purpose, for two reasons: 1) most of the companies I work with deal with this problem and yet 2) almost none of them have any kind of training program in place for new employees.

San Francisco 164

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 23, 2009

Priority will be given to employees of companies participating in the fbFund REV program, but I am confident that there will be room for members of the general public who want to attend. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. Expo SF (May. Bring your questions.

Lean 74

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

In fact theyd cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the companies they started would hire more employees as they grew. In fact theyd cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the companies they started would hire more employees as they grew. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 31, 2009

April 2, 2009 5:41 PM Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Haha good point.it Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Then, the company spends no more than a few hundred dollars marketing the product through search engines and to the contacts in its sales database and LinkedIn. We do not develop a product until we get a paying customer," says Orit Pennington , who co-founded the six-employee company with her husband in 2002. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

We eventually discovered (via five whys ) that we also had to get each new employee acculturated to a fearless way of thinking. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. We always assigned them a "code mentor" from the ranks of the more established engineers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. Its why, at my previous job, we were able to get a new engineer completely productive on their first day. why did that code get written?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Beyond Apple, we can find examples of the Steve Jobs character at Toyota, in the form of the Chief Engineer. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book. So I don't think the Apple experience should be used to discount lean, agile, or customer development-type approaches.

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